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45%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #3,045
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An astronaut gets infected with alien DNA during the first mission on Mars and runs amok on earth. Preston and Laura team up with a peaceful, genetically re-engineered Sil to track the monster down.
--IMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: August 12, 2012
The first Species wasn't exactly a classic horror flick, but it did what I needed it to do for ninety minutes. However, the horror genre is perhaps the most prone to sequel-itis, bringing us to the obligatory Species II.
Some people never fucking learn. Even better, sometimes the government never fucking learns. After the immense failure with Sil and the Alpha Project, they decide, Hey, let's make another one! With Laura Baker in charge of the project to offer the pretense of humanity, a genetic clone, Eve, is born. In an effort to prevent what happened last time, they've dampened her sex drive and kept her completely out of contact with men. I can only imagine who signed off on this project. Meanwhile, Patrick Ross, Dennis Gamble, and Anne Sampas are astronauts that have just landed on Mars. As they begin their journey home, a black ooze crawls out of the soil samples they've taken and attacks the crew. They come to with no recollection that anything happened, and set off for Earth. Turns out the ooze is of the same species that Sil is from, and has infected our three astronauts, actually mutating their genetic code to be purer than Sil was. While Dennis and Anne are both taken care of in some matter or another, Patrick is still out there. Sil was bad enough, but now with a famous, good-looking national hero impregnating hookers and cocktail waitresses at will, the military once again calls in Press Lennox to stop the species from spreading.
You know, I'm a huge fan of horror movies, and as such, I've built up something of a resistance to characters making stupid decisions. Hell, it's pretty much a staple in the slasher genre. But here, said stupid decisions are brought to a whole new level. I mean, REALLY fucking dumb decisions. For starters, making a new clone in the first place was one thing, at least they tried to explain it with the added inhibitions. But then, hey, let's remove those inhibitions to track Patrick because they share a psychic link. So, a little common sense would tell you that if she can sense him, he can sense her, so we'll clue him in to her existence and ramp up her sex drive at the same time. Brilliant! And then there's all the other little moves throughout the running time, most of which made by George Dzunda's character.
Plus, the plot is convoluted as hell. Using SETI to receive some alien DNA was a very nice way to go about things. It was simple, straight-forward and move us right into the action. But now we've gone completely off the rails. We've got missions to Mars to get DNA we already have on Earth, another woman alien who only serves to offer an out-of-nowhere climax, and a shed full of illegitimate alien kids that don't actually do anything. They could have just done something with that rat at the end of the first movie and moved things right into position without having to go all the way to Mars. Between this and the dumb-moves issue, Species II is basically a club bludgeoning our intelligence for ninety straight minutes.
As you might have guessed, our actors are right around the same level. Our two returning members of Sil's task force, Press and Laura (Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger respectively) are both watered down versions of their previous characters, and performances turned in match this bar. Granted, in Madesen's defense, he came right out and called the movie a "crock of shit" so I can understand him not exactly giving a hundred percent. Newcomer Mykelti Williamson wasn't horrible as Dennis, but we've seen the over-sexed black guy thing done countless times, and better. The non-human characters fared a little better, although Patrick's alien form was some big, clunky puppet; it looked horrible. Again, Natasha Henstridge that she has more to offer than just being smoking hot. Not much more mind, but she's on the right side of the line. Her male counterpart, Justin Lazard, doesn't quite hit average, but he's not very far below it.
One more time for emphasis: Species II is fucking dumb. 3/10.
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